


Population Us

by squidmaid



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 22:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3954778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squidmaid/pseuds/squidmaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Novice threshecutioner Karkat is sent as an advance scout to conquer this strange blue planet called “Earth,” only to find that society’s already collapsed. He then proceeds to get dunked on by Dave a whole lot, who’s in crazed survivor mode and living in the wasteland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Population Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pontiffpainticus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pontiffpainticus/gifts).



> Tumblr blog HSprompts fill. I had a lot of fun with this one. Tossed in a reference to a couple of my favorite Dave and Karkat writers here, you know who you are.

“Fucking– release– you broken piece of–  _shit!_ ”

The helmet popped off at the final force of Karkat’s tugging, sending him stumbling a brief second as he caught his balance. Embarrassing – not that it mattered. No one was here to see, but he mentally berated himself and the device anyway, chunking it to the ground of the building he had found himself inside as he plopped down with a soft hiss.

The levels of radiation were low enough that he could safely take in the planet’s air, but more important was the feeling of getting out of his own face. That was where he really felt like he couldn’t breathe.

Wrecked and crumbling structures, hills of foreign soil, and an eerie sense of quiet – all of these surrounded him now, and as he idly deposited a box filled with travel rations up onto the skeleton of what had once probably been a decent excuse for a table, they were what he made note of in the device on his wrist.

“Samples of terrain and plant life gathered, ready for transit. Breaking presently for a meal. Still no signs of any remaining intelligent life,” he muttered, and it was far from what he really wanted to say. A waste of fucking time.

Karkat Vantas had never been under any illusions as to his importance to the empire he served. He was a mutant, cullbait, and the only reason he had gotten this far was through sheer luck. He had proven himself skilled enough for the level of  _novice_  threshecutioner, but he knew the chances of him getting anywhere past that were slim. They were going to throw everything they had at him, to cull him “passively,” and he had to be strong enough to survive it.

This had been only the first of many tests he would have to take on – a solitary scout sent to a foreign planet in a galaxy they had only briefly probed a few sweeps ago for signs of life. Best case scenario, he would survive his landing and take back some useful information. Worst case scenario, they would never hear from him again, and the fucks they would give about that were miniscule.

He had a plan in mind. He would do more than survive this planet; he would learn it inside and fucking out. He would impress their globes off with the shit he would learn about this alien race – their technology, their weapons, their fuel, their  _weaknesses_.

But this? Sit on some dirt, sample some plants, and talk into his wrist? A goddamn wiggler could do this.

It was difficult not to feel that frustration bubbling up again like the chemical reaction heating his rations, that hissing the only sound outside of the wind and the crunch of– wait, crunch?

His head whipped around instantly, and in a ruined doorway that led deeper into the building stood a real, live, bipedal alien, regarding him with what appeared to be a pair of eyegear. The both of them were stock still for what felt like forever – and then, Karkat scrambled to his feet, all but tearing his sickles from his sylladex and watching as the figure darted out of the doorway, the sound of its rapidly retreating footsteps echoing down the corridor.

Karkat raced after him, legs shorter but much, much more determined. If there were anyone still living on this garbage planet, there was no fucking way he was letting them get away and his chances of proving himself with them.

The alien grublord was clearly intent on making shit difficult for him, though, leaping over obstacles with ease and knocking various pieces of furniture and planks of wood into Karkat’s path. It was enough to slow him some, but he managed to tail him close enough to see when he pulled a set of double doors shut behind him, to hear the rattling of chains and the click of something locking in place.

He had already rationally determined that it was probably a futile effort, but he careened right into the double doors, satisfied enough to see them buckle inward some, but eventually the hard tug of metal keeping them blocked sent them right back into position, only a crack of space between them visible for Karkat to see that the alien was still somewhere in there, on the other side.

“Oh, hell no,” he growled, reaching for another tool in his sylladex, and he only took pause when he heard the alien muttering something on the other side. It occurred to him to reach up and fiddle with the psychic receptor that would turn their respective languages into something decipherable, and then, he listened.

“–had to be a candy corn looking motherfucker, this is some straight up Wizard of Oz shit, surprised I’m not tripping yellow bricks yet, Jesus fuck.”

Well, that was hardly any more understandable. “ _What?_ ”

The figure visibly recoiled. “Oh God, oh great, now it’s speaking English, that’s cool.”

“I’m not speaking your stupid alien language, dipshit, it’s called a psychic translator.”

The figure was quiet for only a second. “Seriously? I couldn’t hallucinate some more inventive shit than some straight out of the animes grey dude? Couldn’t be chest bursting alien babies or anything, nope, my scifi apparently equates to something out of Egbert’s wet dream and yet it ain’t even doing me the courtesy of tossing in a few Sailor Moon references, this is a goddamn disgrace to the bygone era of otakus everywhere.”

“Okay, I could really not give a hoofbeast’s rancid shit about your psychobabble.” Karkat was reaching, again, for his sylladex, withdrawing a precision laser tool and raising it to the crack of the doors.

“Whoa, hold up, what the fuck is that?” In another instant, the stranger had a sword, and it slipped between the crack, inches from Karkat’s hands. “Dude, I will straight up cut your hand off if you shove any more alien junk in my crack.”

It was less the sword than the phrasing that made Karkat pause.

“I’m not letting you in here, anime acid trip or not.”

“So you’re going to stand there, alone, with a sword drawn on me for x amount of time?”

“Isn’t that what you’re gonna do?  You’re alone, too.”

“I could call enough backup to make your pale, ugly head spin.” No, he couldn’t.

“No, you can’t,” the alien said. God damn it.

“Just watch me.” Karkat stepped back from the doors, pulling up the recorder on his wrist and pressing a button. “This is Vantas. I’ve intercepted quote unquote intelligent life, armed, requesting backup.” He lowered his arm, gesturing as if to say “what now?”

“When are they getting here?”

“Whenever they get here, so why don’t you just sit your ass down and prepare for the fucking storm?”

“Nah.”

Karkat set his jaw to refrain from screeching. Neither of them moved. Ten minutes later, neither of them had moved still.

“Any minute now?”

“Alright, so you called my fucking bluff. Looks like we’re at an impasse now, thanks to you, grandmaster nookwipe.”

“Dave.”

“Now we’re clearly just going to stand here like idiots until– wait, what?”

“I’m Dave.” They shifted on the other side of the doors, expression unreadable behind dark plastic eyewear.

“Uh. Okay? Are we exchanging pleasantries now?”

“I don’t know what else you planned on doing, but it sure beats staring like a couple of enamored dumbasses through a crack in the door.”

“Actually, I was going to talk to myself, which I have no doubt makes for a better conversational partner than some primitive alien on this backwater apocalypse planet.”

“Which is totally why you turned on your translating whatever.”

“So I could understand your bullshit,” Karkat growled. “Not to carry on a conversation.”

“Well hey, look at what you’re doing. Nice job, junior, you keep at it and one day maybe you’ll have the chops to join up with the debate team. Verbal skills of this magnitude would be a damn shame to waste. Can’t let that happen.”

“Fucking– cull me now.” Karkat retracted his hand, stowing the laser in his sylladex once more to plop down onto the ground, back resting against one of the doors.

There was silence for a good ten seconds. Then, “So hey, what planet are you supposed to be from, anyway? Mars? Uranus? Pluto? Wait, no, they decided that wasn’t a planet anymore. Who even makes those calls, anyway? Like, fuck, if it’s a big enough rock to put your shit on it and live, that sounds planet-worthy to me. There’s just some group of scientists like, no, Steve, that space rock needs to be at least as dense as your mom’s–”

“Hoooooly shit. Alternia! It’s called. Fucking. Alternia. And it’s not even anywhere near your puny, pathetic galaxy.”

“That’s cool. Got any face huggers there?”

“What?”

“You know, like, big ugly bugs laying their eggs in your stomach and shit.”

Karkat stared incredulously down the empty corridor. “No, you disgusting douche. Our mother grub lays– No, you know what, I don’t have to talk to you about this.”

“No, wait, I wanna hear the juicy deets about your mom bug.”

“Do you? Do you really?”

“Yes.” The tone was flat, but nothing followed it. Karkat sighed.

“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The next hour or so was spent trading stories of reproductive, and inevitably, familial structures, during which Karkat learned that Dave was male, had a caste name (or “last name,” as he called it) of Strider, a guardian figure he called a “bro,” and that everyone Dave had ever known was either dead or of questionable enough status that they may as well be.

After a while, Karkat’s digestive sac started growling, and he finally relented to it with a grumble. “You interrupted my meal, and now I’m sure it’s freezing fucking cold.”

“You can go get it, it’s cool, I’ll just chill here on the other side of these doors like a chump. It’s not like I have anywhere to be.”

Dubious, Karkat took the time to follow the path he had chased Dave down to retrieve his food, and by the time he returned, Dave was, in fact, still there, and armed with more questions.

“You got any more troll bug food over there?”

Karkat squinted through the crack. “You want me to share my rations?”

“I’ll give you Skittles.”

“The fuck is a ‘skittle’?”

There was a rustle of paper and plastic, and something launched through the crack – a slim, red package. Karkat snatched it up, tearing open one corner and peering at the contents. “Rainbow circles?”

“Rainbow circles. Or as we say here on planet Earth, taste the rainbow, motherfucker.”

Karkat grimaced. “Don’t say that again.” He scooped one out and popped it into his mouth, crunching down, and he was pleasantly surprised by the sweetness.

“Alright, so can I have the bug food now?”

Karkat grunted begrudging assent, decaptchaloguing another package of rations and working it through the crack. He listened as Dave tore it open, and then to the silence that followed.

“Okay, how do you do this?”

“Ugh. You have to pour water into the–” he peered through the crack, pointing, “that thing, then set the bag inside and let it get hot.”

“Oh, so like military rations in every other country, got it.”

“Why did you ask if you already knew?”

“Mostly to piss you off.”

“Great! It worked! Allow me to fashion you a medal from the remnants of fossilized bird shit clinging to the walls of this dump. Oh, trust me, you really earned it.”

“Thank you.” There was the sound of shuffling, water pouring, then bubbling, and Karkat ate the rest of his meal quietly.

Eventually, they chatted again, and another eventually after that, Karkat realized he was starting to get tired. At some point, he stood again, brushing dust from his pants and prompting a “Where you going?”

“Back to my pod. I figure you’re not going anywhere, and I need to get some sleep at some point.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re right about that. I’ll just keep camping out back here then.” A pause. “What kind of pod?”  
  
“A landing pod. Can I leave now? Because I’m leaving now.”

“Suit yourself, bro,” was all he said, and Karkat started walking away.

When he returned the next day, and the day after that, and a few more consecutive days after that, too, he hadn’t given it much thought. He and Dave chatted through the crack in the double doors, and it was only by the sixth day, when Karkat realized that he had stopped bothering to take recordings into the device on his wrist, that he had an incredibly stupid idea.

They were in the middle of passing candies through the crack again when it tumbled out of Karkat’s mouth. “Not going to lie, these Skittles are good shit. Almost makes me not want to leave this garbage planet.”

Dave laughed some, more than accustomed to his vitriolic nonsense. Practically impervious to it, really. “Sure, just unpack your shit and get comfy. Send a message back home all, sorry guys, but those Earth assholes have some fucking fantastic candy, I gotta drop the mission and all sense of responsibility entirely.” He seemed to think for a moment. “You don’t seem like you’re doing much, anyway. Like, what are you supposed to be doing here?”

“I was supposed to find shit out about your ‘human’ infrastructure, but obviously, that doesn’t exist anymore.”

“By yourself?”

“Yeah, by myself. Back on my planet, they don’t exactly give a shit about people like me, so we get sent on suicide missions like this. Or, like this _should_  have been.”

“Like you? What does that even mean?”

“Mutants,” Karkat bit out, tearing the Skittles open.

“So you’re not even like, a normal troll bug? You’re like a freaky weirdo troll bug?”

Half the bag of Skittles dumped out into Karkat’s mouth. “Fucking incredible,” he breathed, garbled around candy.

“Okay, so if they like– if they don’t give a shit about you, why do you give a shit about helping them out?”

“ _Because_ ,” he said, “if I don’t, I’m dead, anyway. Unless I prove to them that I can do something, they’re going to keep sending me on these stupid missions until I really do get myself killed. I have to accomplish fucking something. I want to  _be_  something before I die.”

“Okay…” Dave was quiet for a moment. “I guess I get that. Like, my bro was kind of a hard ass too, pushing me to do shit and dropping in on me and beating my ass and whatever, and it was kind of like, yeah, I don’t know how I’m supposed to prove anything when you keep kicking my ass. Like, I just didn’t know how I was supposed to be enough for him.”

Karkat didn’t know what to say, chewing candy in the quiet.

“But at the same time, having to prove yourself is kind of a bullshit concept, anyway. Like, you exist, you’re a person, why does your existence require some kind of rigorous testing for you to have the right to be happy or something? Whatever.” Karkat could hear him munching, too, for a moment. “So why don’t you say fuck it?”

“What?”

“You know, stay here or whatever you were saying. If they don’t give a shit about you, anyway.”

“Seriously?”

“Serious. The Skittles don’t lie, man.”

“Okay, but– What?” Karkat felt like his head was reeling. Abandon his mission. Abandon Alternia. Dave was right, though – they didn’t care about him. The people that did care about him were stuck laboring under the same system, and it was doubtful he would ever see them again. That he could get to them again even if he tried.

“Yo, no look, check it,” Dave was saying, and Karkat heard the rattling of chains, the sharp  _clank_  as they hit the ground, and the double doors were moving, dropping Karkat onto his back with a startled cry as the one he was leaned against swung in toward Dave’s side.

And he was staring up at a whole image of the alien he had been conversing with for the first time since the day he had arrived, who, in turn, stared down at him.

“Welcome to Earth, dogg. Population: us.”

Karkat continued to stare up at him, and then, at some point, he had started to laugh. He laughed harder than he could remember laughing in a long time, and by the time Dave kneeled down next to him, he was wiping tears away.

“Dude, what the fuck?”

“Shut– haha, shut the hell up,” he said between laughter, and that night, the two of them slept in Karkat’s landing pod. When the morning came, they destroyed the comm link between the pod and the Alternian ship waiting for him after Karkat delivered a fake distress message, warning them away from the planet. At some point, in a couple sweeps, maybe, they might send another scout to scope out the location once again. But by then, they would already be gone.


End file.
